Chapter 37
Morgan
The vibe is decidedly not chill in the van for our ghost road trip.
We set out early this morning. When I heard from Zach’s sister last night granting us permission to drive his van to his favorite beach for a final tribute, we decided we wanted to maximize our time with Zach’s friends.
Sawyer took a cab to the van this morning, then drove over to my place under the cover of darkness to pick us up.
Here
I should have deleted our texting history.
It’s too easy to scroll through our earlier conversations.
Favorite living tenant lingers in iMessage, evidence of everything now ruined.
It’s the irony of our connection to Zach and Kennedy.
Resolving their unfinished business will help them but not us. Love leaves ghosts everywhere.
Given the ungodly hour, I was prepared to sleep on the drive. But when I opened the passenger door, scents from inside weakened my defenses. Everything-bagel spice and vanilla cappuccino. Sawyer had my coffee and breakfast order waiting for me.
I didn’t say hello. Neither did he.
Still, I didn’t sleep.
As we head onto the 405, the round headlights of Zach’s van illuminate the darkness on the empty freeway leaving Los Angeles.
I sip my coffee, feeling slightly less shitty.
We’re the only people out here, and I feel like we’ve stumbled into some ghostly plane of existence ourselves.
The predawn night still covers the freeway in deep blue.
The sound of our tires on the concrete feels small in the silent world outside.
Zach materializes in the rear of the van, his spectral cold making me shiver when he “leans” on my shoulder. If Zach fears his passage into the hereafter, he hasn’t shown it. His presence has remained calm since our discoveries yesterday.
No complaints from me. It was nice to shower in normal-temperature water without fear of erratic heat fluctuations, and more importantly, I’ll be free to go to Massachusetts without him.
With Zach’s unfinished business still unfinished, deep down, I know I couldn’t have left LA.
The guilt would have pulled me back. He could travel and travel, from Massachusetts to Memphis to Montana, without ever leaving here.
He would be stuck. I couldn’t have stomached the cruelty of holding him here forever or until he vanished into nothing like Kennedy would have.
Now, when Zach is gone, I’ll be completely free to move on. There will be nothing at all holding me here. Nothing to come back to.
I cling to that conviction as the clay and woodsy smell of Sawyer fills Zach’s van.
“So, do you guys want to play the license plate game? I’d love to see Iowa before I die,” he jokes wistfully, like he was reading my mind while I was ruminating on traveling from state to state.
Wait, can he read minds? I reassure myself he could not have kept this ghost power secret if he possessed it.
“It’s too early for road-trip games,” I grumble, curling in my seat.
It’s not that I’m against the game itself.
I just don’t know how to spend two hours making conversation and joking around with Sawyer.
Now I wish I’d ignored his coffee. I could have pretended to sleep.
Foiled by my love for vanilla cappuccino, unfortunately.
Zach fakes offense. “I might be gone in a couple hours and you would deny me my road-trip games?”
“Yes.”
“Cold,” he complains.
“I’ll play a road-trip game with you, Zach,” Sawyer offers.
I would conclude Sawyer is fucking with me, except, irritatingly, he sounds like he’s being sincerely friendly to our ghostly companion.
“Don’t bother,” I interject impatiently.
Is it healthy or normal not to want Sawyer to win points with Zach like divorced parents competing over our ghost child? No, it is not.
Do I feel that way? Yes. Yes, I do.
“He doesn’t even want to play,” I inform Sawyer. “He’s just trying to get us to talk to each other. It won’t work,” I say to Zach, hoping he does not point out that it did, in fact, just sort of work.
Zach only winks in unashamed confirmation of his ulterior motives. He leans the other way to talk to Sawyer. “So, catch us up on your life since we moved out. How’s the house?”
I notice Sawyer’s knuckles tighten on the wheel. Good. “I’ve been spending more time in the studio than the house, actually,” he says.
“Really?” Zach looks over. “Wow, isn’t that interesting, Morgan?”
Okay, admittedly, it is interesting. The idea of our final fight, or Kennedy’s disappearance, releasing Sawyer’s inhibitions in his pottery…I wish I didn’t care about Sawyer enough for it to intrigue me.
So I pretend it doesn’t. I won’t walk into Zach’s obvious manipulations.
I’m here for him, to spend more time with my supernatural friend before he leaves, but my shit with Sawyer is mine to deal with or ignore as I see fit.
Zach isn’t caught between mortality and what lies beyond just to mess with my romantic life. That was Kennedy’s thing.
I drink a deep sip of vanilla cappuccino instead of replying.
Zach presses Sawyer, dauntless. “You’re making pottery again?”
Sawyer’s eyes flash to Zach in the rearview mirror. “Every day,” he says. “The studio is full of it. It’s like I can’t stop. Like everything I should have made for five years is flowing out of me. I’ve started reaching out to my old vendors, too. I have a couple commissions coming in.”
I whip around to face him. “What have you been making?”
Wow, I chastise myself instantly. Way to have zero impulse control or principled restraint. Embarrassed, I face forward, pretending I did not just ask the question while a certain ghost gloats over my shoulder.
“Nothing,” Sawyer replies.
Even if his lie stings, I can’t help feeling a little relieved. Clearly he’s no more interested in reconciling than I am. We don’t have to pretend to make small talk.
He clears his throat like he’s forcing friendliness. It reminds me of our first meeting. Ghosts everywhere. “I mean, it’s not really anything that great,” he explains. “Just whatever comes to me. You could come see—”
He stops himself. The silence hangs precariously in the car.
“You should totally go look at what he’s made, Morgan.” Zach very deliberately finishes what Sawyer clearly wanted left unsaid. “You need your Los Angeles memento anyway,” he adds.
Well played, Zach, I nearly say when Sawyer’s gaze flits to me.
“Memento?” he repeats, returning his eyes to the road. “Why would you need a memento?”
I grit my teeth, furious with Zach. You know what, forget my vanilla cappuccino. If I need to pretend to sleep to escape ghost-mandated therapy, I will. I close my eyes in quiet confrontation.
Naturally, Zach replies for me. “Morgan is moving,” he informs Sawyer matter-of-factly.
I hear Sawyer scoff. “Of course she is.”
My eyes fly open. Leave it to Sawyer to dispel my indignant pretend sleep. What right does he have to be dismissive of my choices? I fix my stare on him, the new object of my fury.
“I can’t wait, actually. Massachusetts,” I say proudly, hoping he hears the challenge in my voice. “I’ve never lived there, and I’m such a big fan of clam chowder and…” Okay, I’m struggling here. Massachusetts. Massachusetts…Inspiration strikes. “Dunkin’ Donuts,” I say.
“We have Dunkin’ here,” Sawyer says.
“It’s not the same. I crave authenticity.”
Sawyer shifts in his seat. His restless movement is the physical equivalent of grumbling. “So, you’re moving because you have a sudden urge for authentic Dunkin’ Donuts?”
I set my drink in the cupholder, ready to fight now.
The fact is, Sawyer fucking knows why I’m leaving Los Angeles.
He and his haunting have left me heartbroken.
Just because it’s not his fault doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, and he doesn’t get to pretend my flight response to my fragile, messy life is some shameful character flaw.
If he’s going to call out my Massachusetts bullshit, I’ll give him what he doesn’t want—the truth. “It’s time for a change,” I say. “I think I’ve gotten all I can out of LA.”
Sawyer’s grip clenches on the wheel. “Of course you have. Tell me, which plant will you reduce your time here to? Or since you’re running away, does LA not get a plant?”
My cheeks heat. Not cool. While we walked the paths of the Huntington Gardens, I shared my life with him in the most honest, personal way I could.
I dared to let him in on how I see my life like one vast garden, rooted in me but ever-changing, with room to nurture new blooms or tend to old reminiscences.
Now he’s thrown my happy memories—our happy memories, of kissing under peppermint shade, surrounded by so much life—in my face.
Clearly the moment is nothing but a point in an argument for him. Something to use to make me feel bad. Rocks to throw in my garden.
Well, two can play that road-trip game.
“Like you’re any better than I am,” I return. “I may be running away, but at least I’m running. You’re not going anywhere.”
Sawyer’s jaw clenches, reminding me how horribly often I’ve seen him tense. It consumes him. I once thought Sawyer was chiseled of stone. He’s not—he’s encased in it. He’s trapped in himself, miserable.
I don’t give him the chance to reply. It feels good to get out my feelings. Perhaps this is the exorcism I’ve been looking for. “You have no dreams, no hopes, while you sit in your crumbling house wanting nothing but what’s behind you,” I say.
“If living in a crumbling house is the cost of feeling something real, it’s worth it.
You wouldn’t know,” Sawyer snaps. The stone cracks—the dam of his resentment bursts.
He rages on, unable to stop. “You’ve never let yourself care about anything enough to be haunted by it.
Who would you haunt if you were to die?” His voice is pinched with pain.
His breathing is shallow with wounded fury.
I don’t care. I don’t even care how much his words sting. It feels good to hurt each other while we still can. One of the gifts of being alive, I guess.
“Hey,” Zach chimes in. “Don’t you just love the radio? Let’s see what we got.” He reaches forward, like he’s hoping his paranormal proximity will summon some Kesha out of his old van stereo. He’s obviously realized his efforts to conjure conversation from me and Sawyer have backfired spectacularly.
His ghostly powers work—smooth surf guitar emanates from the radio. Or maybe the van just likes him.
I don’t react. Neither does Sawyer. We’re not done yet.
“Well,” I say, “if you were to die, you’d have no unfinished business at all.
” I remember Kennedy’s words. Two ghosts living in this house for too long.
No. Sawyer, I’ve learned, is something more and something less than ghostly. Human but hollow.
“Good,” he shoots back. “We wouldn’t even be in this spot if Kennedy and Zach didn’t have unfinished business. We wouldn’t have even met.”
The windshield wipers engage, their rubber thump momentarily startling on the dry glass while we rush forward into the dawn. Zach.
“If only we’d been so lucky!” I nearly shout. The words wrack my voice, because honestly, I don’t mean them. I only wish I did. I fucking wish I hadn’t felt every wonderful thing I did with Sawyer.
Now, I’ll know what I’m longing for every day I don’t have it. I’ll remember what bloom in my garden he ripped up. It’s gone now, but while it wasn’t, it lived, flourishing in inimitable color.
He shakes his head, furious, looking like he wants to outdo me, to find something even more ruthless to say than regretting our ever meeting. He opens his mouth, his every muscle rigid. Suddenly—
Headlights explode from the near darkness. We round the freeway curve, moving fast, too fast, while they glare through the windshield, too close. Much too close. I should have known the freeway wouldn’t be empty. This isn’t purgatory. It’s Los Angeles.
Sawyer pumps his foot furiously. “The brakes,” he says. He stomps the floor of the old van. “They’re not working!”
“What do you mean?” Panic flares hot in me. The headlights speed closer. Someone is driving on the wrong side of the empty freeway, speeding straight for us.
Sawyer releases his grip on the wheel with one hand.
While he flings his arm protectively across me, I scream into the oncoming light.